OUR STORY
OUR STORY
“Oat & Mill came about from wishing I could have an ice cream that tasted undeniably rich and creamy, and reminded me of the local parlour shop I went to growing up.
It wasn’t until I was cooking oatmeal for breakfast on the stove one day that I realized how creamy oats were and saw potential to make them into something reminiscent of the ice cream I had missed.”
All of our vegan ice creams take a lengthy and rewarding process to make. All pastry and baked goods that go into the ice cream are made from scratch in house. We make it over multiple days to get the best flavour and texture. We buy locally in season. The ice cream keeps well when stored in our freezer that has clean and continuous air flow. The details make all the difference.
We churn our fresh mix in small batches into a full-body, creamy oatmilk ice cream like no other.
Freezing
We then transfer the goods into a blast freezer to rapidly freeze everything. The faster you freeze, the creamier the ice cream will be. We let the ice creams freeze overnight to reduce ice crystals and make for a super smooth scoop.
Our Recipes
We make the ice cream mix from scratch using our in house developed recipes. The mix is aged to thicken and bring out more flavour. Each flavour we create is packed with in house additions such as vanilla beans, fresh or roasted fruits, spices, burnt sugar caramels, fresh baked brownies, and hand layered chocolate chunks.
Churning into ice cream
History
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![Front page of the Ottawa Business Journal featuring an article about a tech entrepreneur, a story on a frozen oat treat, and advertisements.]()
2015
Candace Tierney, Oat & Mill's Founder, is an Ottawa Valley entrepreneur who transformed her love of ice cream, commitment to sustainability and belief in giving back to the community into a successful, growing and award winning business.
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![Person holding a cup labeled "Oat & Mi" in a cornfield.]()
2016
Oat & Mill's roots trace to the Carp Farmer's Market, a local market held every Saturday just west of Ottawa. The number one question she received, how can I get more of this?
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![Hand-dipped waffle cones with toppings displayed at a market booth, with a person behind the counter and a sign reading 'Oat and Mill' in the background.]()
2018
Candace took Oat & Mill on the road! Serving high stacked ice cream cones at events and festivals across Canada. Most of the time gathering line-ups of over 75 people waiting an hour to get some of her ice cream.
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![Two people posing with an award plaque at an Ontario event.]()
2019
From there Candace set up a kitchen to make the ice cream, buying her first big machines and hiring a team to help her make more ice cream at scale
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![A supermarket shelf displaying various flavors of Oat & Mill vegan ice cream in colorful containers, including blue, yellow, and orange.]()
2020
Oat & Mill expanded into over 200 retailers across Canada. Offering 5 flavours in pints on grocery store shelves. Now more people could easily get their hands on the ice cream!
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![Box of plant-based gelato bars, salted caramel flavor, on a wooden table.]()
2024
Oat & Mill now sells in over 600+ locations. Including scoop shops and grocery stores, like Whole Foods Market and Sobeys. Candace created a new line of novelties and expanded her flavour line up in stores. Everyone loves the ice cream!
Our Work
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We developed a way to eliminate all waste from processing oats into ice cream. We make our oat cream from scratch with a process that doesn't require "extraction". Often when oat milks use extraction, they remove part of the fibre that doesn't blend perfectly, this results in leftover waste. We have a special process that allows us to keep all the fibre in the oat cream and keeps everything ultra creamy.
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We build our own ice cream kitchen and facility and stop relying on co-packers. We built our own facility to better control the quality and production of our ice creams. Did you know that most ice cream brands, even some artisanal brands don't make their own ice cream? The process is called co-packing and most experts will tell you this is the best route for producing and they are correct in many ways. We decided to build our own production where we make everything in house and control all the steps involved. We make our mixes from scratch in house, we churn the ice cream in house, we bake all pastry and mix ins. It's more work this way but it tastes better in our opinion.
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We would like to work more closely with local farmers. Our oats today are sourced from Manitoba and Saskatchewan. We are working to develop a new system that allows us to work with farmers closer geographically to our facility and that can grow specific varieties of oats. The shorter the distance your food travels to you the fresher and more sustainable our food systems will be.
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We're working towards removing plastics from our supply chain. All of our packaging is transitioning to plastic-free. It's taken some time but we are excited to offer our new ice cream containers made from paper with a sugar cane lining in the cup. The sugar cane replaces plastic and you won't even physically see a difference, it's pretty neat stuff. We are working on reducing plastics that come from other materials into our kitchens.
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Putting even more oats into our ice cream base mix. Today we put more oats in our base mix than what you would find in your typical off the shelf oat milk. However, we have some other ingredients in our base mix that we would like to replace with more oats. Our team is continuously working towards this goal, with ongoing research and development efforts.
